Seventeen months after the United States and Iran began negotiating a possible return to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal abandoned by President Donald J. Trump, the European Union has presented a “final” proposal for both sides to consider before the talks are collapsing for good, Western officials said.
Negotiations have seen many interruptions, crises and imminent conclusions, and it is far from certain that the latest proposal is a final chapter. But US and EU officials say their patience has grown wafer-thin as Iran steadily expands its nuclear program.
“What can be negotiated has been negotiated and it is now in a final text,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell Fontelles said on Twitter on Monday.
US officials have long warned that time is running out to reach an agreement. A State Department spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiations, said the United States was “ready to make a deal quickly” and that the EU proposal was “the only possible basis” for that. .
US officials are skeptical that Iran is willing to roll back its program in exchange for relief from sanctions that have weakened its economy. But some analysts say the parties have come closer than expected.
In a remarkable shift, Iran has withdrawn from two key demands. One is urging the United States to remove Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from its official list of foreign terrorist organizations, according to people briefed on the negotiations and two Iranians familiar with the talks.
That demand became one of the last roadblocks to restore the deal after President Biden refused to undo the terrorist designation of the guards corps issued by Mr. Trump in 2019.
The other is an insistence that the Biden administration offers guarantees that a future president will not pull out of the deal, even if Iran keeps its promises, as Mr Trump did in 2018. The Iranians have come to accept that such a promise is not possible. is, according to the two Iranians.
“We’re closer than we’ve been since the deal nearly came to an end last May, before talks for the Iranian election were suspended,” said Joseph Cirincione, a nuclear policy expert who consulted closely with the Obama administration during talks to finalize the original agreement. stop nuclear attack. agreement. “In short: it can happen.”
Such a breakthrough would give Biden a foreign policy feat as he heads to midterm elections in the fall, though some European officials say the US president may be wary of political criticism over renewing a deal from the United States. Obama era that almost uniformly denounces Republicans and that even some key Democrats resist in its original form.
Understand the Iran Nuclear Deal
Another factor is a new Iranian demand that the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, halt a three-year investigation into unexplained man-made uranium at several Iranian research sites, including some that Tehran refuses to allow IAEA inspectors. visits. Iran vehemently denied that it had military intentions with enriched uranium.
“This is their style: towards an agreement, but at the point of agreement say, ‘There is one more thing,'” said Mr Cirincione.
The agency identified traces of uranium particles based on information discovered in 2018, when Israeli agents stole thousands of documents and CDs about Iran’s nuclear program from a warehouse in Tehran.
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The stolen documents indicated that Iran had a military nuclear program until at least 2003, when the United States believes it ended. Israel is still not convinced it was closed.
Iran has dropped the investigative key to its approval of the nuclear deal, although the IAEA has not signed it and was not involved in the negotiations.
The agency’s secretary-general, Rafael M. Grossi, has also said it would be difficult for the agency to restore with full confidence an assessment of where Iran is at enrichment, as the country has banned the agency for months from replace entire memory cards and cameras. , as part of its own effort to pressure the negotiators.
“Just like in 2015, it is very difficult to separate Iran’s past from its future,” said Ellie Geranmayeh of the European Council on Foreign Relations, which is monitoring the negotiations.
“Iran wants to end the IAEA investigation into its past as part of the revival of the JCPOA,” she added, using the abbreviation for the original agreement. “The West is not willing to drop the investigation.”
Ali Vaez, the Iran director of the International Crisis Group, said that “Iran is wrong is that it cannot wish for the UN inspections to do their job.”
“What it has to do is get clean once and for all,” said Mr. vaez. “The parties have managed to resolve a number of issues, which is a positive development. But the fact that there is still one difference of opinion is no guarantee of success.”
Even if it is finally signed, the new deal would take months. Critics noted that even if Iran agreed to the enrichment limits in the original deal, the country will have enough knowledge to build a nuclear weapon if it so chooses, making it a “threshold state.”
Iran also does not accept that the current proposed 35-page deal is a conclusive offer. Nour News, a news outlet for the Supreme National Security Council, said on Tuesday that “the Islamic Republic of Iran does not accept the current text as the final text, of course.”
After Mr Biden refused to lift the US surveillance corps designation in the spring, Iran installed new advanced centrifuges in sites deep underground and enriched uranium to 60 percent, which is close to weapons grade and not needed for civilian use.
In Iran, many analysts doubt whether a deal is within reach. Iran’s conservative government faces internal divisions, and hard factions mistrust the West. Making important concessions also involves political repercussions. Some conservative lawmakers have said any agreement that labels the Guard Corps as a terrorist group is unacceptable.
But if Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, turns down the current Western offer, Iran probably wouldn’t give up on talks. Iran sees itself as leveraging a West eager for a deal that would bring more Iranian oil into a global economy ravaged by high energy prices, analysts say. But Ayatollah Khamenei also wants to lift restrictive sanctions.
Mr Vaez said that if this attempt at an agreement fails, the West will have to think about narrower alternatives.
“They will then likely explore alternative options, such as an interim deal, against the backdrop of an intensified race of centrifuge sanctions,” Mr Vaez said.